difference {remstats}

difference

Description

Specifies the statistic for a "difference" effect in the tie-oriented model or the receiver choice step of the actor-oriented model. A difference effect refers to an exogenous actor attribute that affects dyad (i,j)'s rate of interacting (tie-oriented model) or actor j's probability of being chosen as a receiver for the event send by the active sender i at time t (actor-oriented model) based on the difference between the values of actors i and j on this attribute.

Usage

difference(
  variable,
  attr_actors = NULL,
  scaling = c("none", "std"),
  absolute = TRUE,
  attr_data
)

Arguments

variable

string with the name of the column in the attr_actors object for which the statistic has to be computed.

attr_actors

optionally, an object of class data.frame that contains the attribute, see 'Details.'

scaling

the method for scaling the statistic. Default is to not scale the statistic. Alternatively, standardization of the statistic per time point can be requested with "std".

absolute

Logical value indicating whether the difference values should be converted to the absolute difference (default is TRUE).

attr_data

Deprecated argument. Please use 'attr_actors' instead.

Details

The statistic at timepoint t is equal to the (absolute) difference between the values of actor i and j on the attribute at timepoint t.

Construct the 'attr_actors' object as a data frame where each row represents the attribute value of actor i at timepoint t:

• name: The actors' name.

• time: The time when the attribute values change.

• variable: The third column contains the attribute used in the specification of the "difference" effect. The column name should correspond to the string supplied to the variable argument in the 'difference()' function.

Note that it is possible to omit the 'attr_actors' object in the call of difference() and, instead, supply it in the call of remstats() for multiple exogenous effects.

Note that it is possible to omit the 'attr_actors' object in the call of difference() and, instead, supply it in the call of remstats() for multiple exogenous effects.

Value

List with all information required by 'remstats::remstats()' to compute the statistic.

Examples

# Example for tie-oriented model
reh_tie <- remify::remify(history, model = "tie")
effects <- ~ difference("extraversion", absolute = TRUE)
remstats(reh = reh_tie, tie_effects = effects, attr_actors = info)

# Example for actor-oriented model
reh_actor <- remify::remify(history, model = "actor")
remstats(reh = reh_actor, receiver_effects = effects, attr_actors = info)